The first NBA All-Star game was held at the Boston Garden in 1951. Ed Macauley of the Celtics scored 20 points and was named MVP of the game; the East won 111-94. On the court, players wore blue and white jerseys with giant stars on them. As seen above, belts were worn on shorts, as elastic waist bands wouldn’t be introduced until the 1960s.

Basketball jerseys were still very much in a development phase, and were exclusively seen as a uniform for players—rather than any kind of fashionable sportswear apparel that could be worn off the court. Furthermore, in keeping with the idea of the team above any individuals (basketball players weren’t the individual icons that we think of in the modern NBA) the early jersey designs didn’t feature players’ names on the back. The individuality and creativity that would come to define not only the All-Star game, but the NBA as a whole, was not yet on display during this period.

As a whole, men’s activewear choices did not particularly focus on sportswear that would be helpful (or, better yet, comfortable) to someone playing basketball. Button-down shirts, polo tees and shirt jackets were the preferred choices for casual wear. As far as modern sportswear apparel icons go, Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman were over a decade away from co-founding Blue Ribbon Sports, which came into being in 1964. Blue Ribbon served as the precursor to Nike, which would come together in 1971. Coincidentally, that was the same year adidas would release its first player-endorsed basketball sneaker with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. In the early years, All-Star uniforms were simply for the basketball court, and in that way, exclusively designed with that use in mind.

In 1967, the All-Star game was held in San Francisco, and the All-Star jerseys were designed based on the Warriors’ “The City” uniforms. It was a small gesture in when compared to the designs of the mid-‘90s, but the move ushered in an era where the literal “uniformity” of the All-Star jerseys gave way to a unique design every year. If nothing else, All-Star jerseys represented the city in which the game was being played.

This trend continued into the 1970s, with a particular highlight being the Lakers-themed All-Star jerseys at the 1972 All-Star game at The Forum in Inglewood, California. The Washington Bullets-inspired 1980 All-Star game jerseys, with red, blue and white design, remains one of the best All-Star jersey of all-time.

While All-Star jerseys started to come to life in the ‘60s and ‘70s, the best was still to come.

The 1980s saw a return to uniformity in All-Star jersey designs. Players wore the same jerseys for the game from 1985 to 1990: a simple a red, white and blue jersey accented with stars. But a few breakthrough occurred during that period which would usher basketball jerseys and All-Star uniforms into the mainstream. Champion took over as the official partner of the NBA in 1989. In the same year, Alexander Julian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Julian) became the first fashion designer to create a jersey for a major North American sports team, when he came up with the iconic teal pinstripe look for the Charlotte Hornets. The jersey’s blend of “classy” design elements on a sports uniform signaled a now-evident cross-pollination in modern style. Like other sportswear trends in the late-‘80s and into the ‘90s, basketball apparel became a huge part people’s wardrobes and became a street style which penetrated pop culture. From Salem Sportswear T-shirts, to Starter jackets, to Champion basketball jerseys, there was a huge retail boom for sportswear.

In an era of Zubaz pants and Chalk Line jackets, the NBA in the 1990s kept up with the mainstream trend of loud and colorful aesthetics. For its regular season jersey between 1995 and 1999, The Atlanta Hawks wore a red-and-black outfit with a giant hawk on the front, the Toronto Raptors went with a purple theme and featured a dinosaur prominently on the first iteration of the team’s jerseys. Those were just two examples.

The craze spilled over into All-Star jersey designs. In 1995, with the All-Star game held in Phoenix, white-and-purple uniforms, accented with a green cactus, were worn by players for the game. The following year, with the All-Star game held at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas, aqua-colored uniforms with a basketball spinning on a chili pepper as the main graphical flourish. In the ‘90s, like in 1967, it appeared that the design team was more than happy to take direct cues from the All-Star host city. Back-to-back southwestern All-Star games meant back-to-back southwestern kitsch.

As if their over-the-top aesthetics were too much, the 1995 and 1996 NBA All-Star jerseys would be the end of an era. By the next All-Star break, the league would transition back towards uniformity.

When Mitchell & Ness signed licensing deals with NBA, NFL and the NHL to produce throwback jerseys in the late 1990s, it launched throwbacks like Wes Unseld’s Washington Bullets jersey and Alex English’s Denver Nuggets jerseys into the mainstream. In the early-2000s, you couldn’t watch 15 minutes of hip-hop videos without seeing a proliferation of throwbacks.

This sportswear trend would seem to signal a continued move towards All-Star jerseys which would build on the mainstream success of the louder 1990s jersey designs. However, from 1997 to 2002, players simply wore the home or road version of their own jerseys to play in the All-Star game. After that period, the NBA went back to more traditional colors and designs for their All-Star jerseys. It almost feels like the modern day version of the original uniforms from the 1950s.

The NBA also instituted a dress code in 2005. Players would now have to wear business or conservative attire while arriving and leaving games. No longer were players allowed to wear jerseys, jeans and hats. While it’s hard to pin the more conservative “red vs. blue” All-Star designs on something like this, the diminishing returns on All-Star jersey designs happens to have coincided with this development.

Where are we at today? From 2003 onwards, the jerseys have generally been churned out in variations of “red vs. blue”, with some years swapping in gold (2008), black (2015) or accented green (2014). 2017’s All-Star jerseys from adidas received plenty of negative feedback. That said, with Nike taking over the apparel partnership with the NBA this season, Jordan Brand has designed a black-and-white look to the All-Star jerseys. As jerseys have been taking more muted approach for almost two decades, this feels like the most streamlined conceptual iteration yet. Interestingly though, there seems to be a call back to the precedent of players wearing their normal team’s jerseys during the All-Star game; the jerseys may be monochrome (leading to a “black vs. white” dynamic in-game), but each player’s home team logo will be plastered on the front of each jersey.

For those clamoring for a return to something more glitzy for the All-Star game, there is hope. The Rising Stars game jerseys, showcasing the best first and second year players in the league, pay homage to the Buffalo Braves (who later became the Los Angeles Clippers) and Minneapolis Lakers (who later became the Los Angeles Lakers), harkening back to the 1970s when All-Star jerseys paid tribute to the hosting city (2018’s All-Star weekend will be held in Los Angeles).

Looking back, All-Star uniforms have evolved through the decades to reflect the changing aesthetics of sportswear, and how the mainstream audience has responded to basketball jerseys. Ironically though, one thing is common: as much as the uniforms have shifted in aesthetics, they always manage to reflect the tone and tenor of that year’s, decade’s and era’s NBA. From the utilitarian and sparse original All-Star uniforms, to the personality-injected jerseys from the mid-’90s, it’s surprising how often the uniforms seem to be summarizing snapshot of the NBA in that given year. Of course, this ebb and flow makes predicting the future of All-Star jerseys an impossible task, but also means the unpredictability of it will lend itself to more creative directions down the road.